<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Despite the name he acquired from his father, an immigrant from Syria, Hammami was every bit as Alabaman as his mother, a warm, plain-spoken woman who sprinkles her conversation with blandishments like “sugar” and “darlin’.” <span style='font-size: 20pt'>Brought up a Southern Baptist, Omar went to Bible camp as a boy and sang “Away in a Manger” on Christmas Eve.</span> As a teenager, his passions veered between Shakespeare and Kurt Cobain, soccer and Nintendo. In the thick of his adolescence, he was fearless, raucously funny, rebellious, contrarian. “It felt cool just to be with him,” his best friend at the time, Trey Gunter, said recently. “You knew he was going to be a leader.”

These cases have sent intelligence analysts scurrying for answers. The American suspects come from different backgrounds and socioeconomic strata, but they share much in common with Europe’s militants: they tend to be highly motivated, even gifted people who were reared in the West with one foot in the Muslim world. Others may see them as rigid or zealous, but they <span style='font-size: 17pt'>envision themselves as deeply principled, </span>possessing what Robert Pape, a professor at the University of Chicago, calls <span style='font-size: 20pt'>“an altruism gone wildly wrong.” While their religious piety varies,</span> they are most often bonded by a politically driven anger that has deepened as America’s war against terrorism endures its ninth year.

</div></div>

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">The first years of Omar’s life followed the cues of his mother’s Southern upbringing. Freckled and blond, he answered to Omie. He spent summer afternoons on his grandparents’ farm in nearby Perdido, shelling peas and eating watermelon on the porch. He lost himself in “Tom Sawyer.” His uncles taught him to hunt deer.

On Sundays, Omar, Dena and their mother settled into the wooden pews of Perdido Baptist Church, a tiny congregation whose preacher warned of hellfire and damnation. At first, Shafik had no idea. Debra told the kids to keep their churchgoing a secret. They also attended Bible camp in the summers (Omar won $10 for rattling off the names of all the books of the Old Testament). When he was 6, he voluntarily walked to the front of the church to be baptized. “I believed it; I wanted it,” he later told his friend Trey Gunter.

Shafik tried to teach his children Arabic and later Islam, but the lessons held little resonance. Syria remained a distant backdrop amid the Fourth of July fireworks, Halloween costumes and shrimp gumbo of their American youth. Omar had gone from calling his father Babba — Arabic for “father” — to Bubba. Still, the Hammami home remained culturally Muslim. They left their shoes at the door. Koranic inscriptions decorated the walls. Pork was forbidden. “It was like two different schools of thought under one roof,” Dena says. “Thunder and lightning.”

The children learned to adapt. So did their parents. In one of the family’s home videos, shot on Oct. 8, 1992, Shafik points the camera at a cake. “Today is Debra’s birthday,” he says in a Syrian accent that has acquired an Alabaman lilt. “We’re fixin’ to celebrate her birthday in a few minutes.” In the next shot, Debra stands by the cake, smiling brightly, as a Lebanese love ballad echoes through the house. Eight-year-old Omar licks frosting off the candles as his mother opens presents. She lifts a bottle of perfume to her nose.

“That’s worth getting old for, ain’t it?” Debra says with a laugh.

“I reckon,” Shafik answers from behind the camera.

A smirk crosses Omar’s face as he repeats, mockingly, “Ah reckin.”

</div></div>

<span style="color: #000066">Oh wait, doesn't that describe some of our religious right wing right here???

No surprise to me, I've always thought the radical religious right wing was of the same core ideology as the terrorist Jihadists, and with the same intent to condemn and rule all others in their quest for a national and global dictatorship.

G. </span>

LWW

02-08-2010, 08:47 AM

It's OK sister Gayle, people oftn hate what they don't understand ... and you obviously can't understand an ideology that values life and forgiveness.

Bless you.

LWW

cushioncrawler

02-08-2010, 02:48 PM

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Gayle in MD</div><div class="ubbcode-body">.....Oh wait, doesn't that describe some of our religious right wing right here??? No surprise to me, I've always thought the radical religious right wing was of the same core ideology as the terrorist Jihadists, and with the same intent to condemn and rule all others in their quest for a national and global dictatorship...</div></div>There iz no altruizm in islamizm and christianizm -- it iz all about a stupid illogikal sort of selfishness.
But the real enemy iz the GOP and their krappynomix.
madMac.

Gayle in MD

02-08-2010, 02:52 PM

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: cushioncrawler</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Gayle in MD</div><div class="ubbcode-body">.....Oh wait, doesn't that describe some of our religious right wing right here??? No surprise to me, I've always thought the radical religious right wing was of the same core ideology as the terrorist Jihadists, and with the same intent to condemn and rule all others in their quest for a national and global dictatorship...</div></div>There iz no altruizm in islamizm and christianizm -- it iz all about a stupid illogikal sort of selfishness.
But the real enemy iz the GOP and their krappynomix.
madMac. </div></div>

Hey.......it's Alabama...where east meets west, while never the twain shall meet, and the rules of engagement are overlooked somewhat when your first cousin has all of her front teeth and you know she...or
it don't come easy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUbntU2N7xY)

Sid_Vicious

02-08-2010, 04:10 PM

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: wolfdancer</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Hey.......it's Alabama...where east meets west, while never the twain shall meet, and the rules of engagement are overlooked somewhat when your first cousin has all of her front teeth and you know she...or
it don't come easy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUbntU2N7xY) </div></div>

You forgot the state motto, "Where men are men, and sheep run scared." sid

Deeman3

02-08-2010, 04:29 PM

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: wolfdancer</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Hey.......it's Alabama...where east meets west, while never the twain shall meet, and the rules of engagement are overlooked somewhat when your first cousin has all of her front teeth and you know she...or
it don't come easy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUbntU2N7xY) </div></div>

<span style="color: #FF0000">Jack,

We will take care of these guys, I promise. As you say, the rules of engagement are much different here. /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smile.gif If we were not in a battle to the death for our Governor raiding the bingo parlors, we would have already run over this clown. /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smile.gif